


Shed a Little Light

by ssa_archivist



Category: Smallville
Genre: Futurefic, M/M, PWP, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-07-24
Updated: 2004-07-24
Packaged: 2017-11-01 07:59:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/354083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssa_archivist/pseuds/ssa_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Purely schmoop</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shed a Little Light

## Shed a Little Light

by howsemowse

[]()

* * *

There were times when leaving Metropolis was imperative, when the stench of exhaust-choked air filled his lungs once too often, and everything he ate tasted of the fishy reek of river water. He had to leave when the constant roar of cars, horns, and shouting people drowned out his own thoughts and the alien in him cringed from the press of human bodies. Or maybe it wasn't an alien thing, but a farm boy thing because when his nerves were at the breaking point it wasn't some distant star he longed for, but the wide open spaces and blue skies of Smallville, Kansas. He was alone in a crowd to be sure, but sometimes it was necessary to be _alone_ , period. 

The sun shone bright in a summer sky as blue as Superman's costume, without a cloud in sight. All around the little meadow were acres upon acres of corn, grown thigh high, their dark green leaves swaying the breeze that blew over what had once been prairie grassland. Warmth soaked into the soil, and into the man who stretched naked upon the grass. One hand rested upon his broad chest, the other lay at his side. His eyes were closed. 

Like a solar battery, Clark absorbed the sun's energy. It was the source of his powers, he knew that now, and he could feel it re-energizing him. He'd retreated to Smallville just that morning, feeling overwhelmed with exhaustion after a summer-time crime spree forced Superman to be "on" twenty-four seven and "Clark Kent" to scramble around writing news stories about it. He'd nabbed burglars, put out fires, rescued children from their own summer break overindulgence.... 

Tired. He was just plain tired. 

The sunshine reminded him of sex. It caressed his bare skin from head to toe, shimmering waves of heat tickling him like the soft touch of a lover's fingers. It penetrated him, warming him from the outside in until he felt full to bursting. The heat wrapped around his cock and squeezed. He was turned on by the sunshine. How's that for alien? 

With a sigh of contentment, Clark rolled over onto his belly. The coolness of the grass beneath him kept his arousal in check. He stretched his arms up and crossed them beneath his head for a pillow. The sunlight settled down across his back the like the cape he normally wore. Clark wasn't very modest, not like he used to be, Superman's costume didn't allow much room for modesty. Skin tight and slick, it resisted normal wear and tear, but it also clung in a most revealing manner. The cape was borne more of a need for some sort of cover up than anything else. 

He listened to the sound of bird-song from a nearby stand of trees, and the "hush hush" of the breeze flowing through the corn. No planes roared overhead. There was nothing but the earth, the sun, and the sounds of the planet's less complex inhabitants. Clark let his mind wander away from the city and its issues, and his own troubles in regards to love and friendship. He drank in the sun, and the song until every last bit of tension drained from his body. His pale limbs relaxed. His shoulders lost their stiffness. He slept. 

* * *

No alarm woke him, no cry for help jolted him out of his slumber. Instead he woke gradually, his senses slowly coming on line as he rejoined the waking world. If he'd had dreams, he didn't remember anything of them, but he lay there quietly trying to recall. Shifting his arms a little, he turned his head. His eyes opened on the brightness that still lingered in the sky, although the sun was much closer to the horizon than it had been when he'd arrived. Soon it would be setting, casting streaks of pink and gold across the sky. He'd stay for the show, and then go home to sparkling diamonds of light strewn upon a dark, velvet background -Metropolis at night. 

Clark did not take the beauty of his adopted world for granted, but he'd watched the sun set from a myriad of exotic locations, and there was still no place like home. 

He sighed, and turned to look the other direction. Even the surprise he felt as he discovered he was not alone, was not enough to break his relaxation. He simply raised his head, leaning on his elbows in the grass. 

Lex had been in Europe for many years. 

"You're back," Clark said softly. 

"So are you." 

"More or less." 

"I'd say more." He was sitting cross-legged in the grass, his white shirt unbuttoned, tails untucked, and the sleeves rolled up. Coiled like a snake nearby was his tie. Shoes and socks sat beside it. He'd been watching Clark sleep for some time. His eyes looked very blue in the sunlight. "What are you, Clark?" 

"Superman," he said simply, with a wry tone that mimicked Lex's cockiness of old. "Don't you read the paper?" 

"Did you think I wouldn't recognize you?" 

The reply was a whisper, his gaze direct. "No." 

Lex looked pained, caught between emotions, and Clark knew what he felt because he had felt it himself whenever he saw Lex's picture, or read an article about how his life and career were going ten years after Smallville. Caught somewhere between love and hate, trust was still difficult to find. 

"The secret revealed," Lex murmured. "And you think I won't use it against you?" 

"Will you?" 

There was a long silence. Clark rested his chin in his hands and closed his eyes again, luxuriating not only in the sun, but within Lex's gaze. It had been a long time since Lex had looked at him the way he was looking now. He sensed the longing, the regret, and the loneliness, things Clark himself felt. 

"They said Superman had left the city after the Hampton Tower fire. I knew you were coming here. When you weren't at the house, I went for a walk.." 

Clark cracked open his eyes. "You don't owe me an explanation." 

"I miss you." 

"That wasn't easy." 

"Don't play games with me, Clark.," Lex said wearily. "I know you're not the naive kid I once knew." He hesitated. "Now I'm not sure you ever were. Was it all an act? Did I ever really know you?" 

"You knew me better than anyone else did, Lex." 

Lex nodded, "As you knew me." He looked down at his hands in an uncharacteristic gesture of insecurity. "Somehow our vision got muddied somewhere along the way." 

"Yeah, I know." Clark yawned. He rolled over onto his back and stretched, raising his arms above his head and pointing his toes like a cat lolling around in a patch of catnip. He felt rather catlike, sleek in his nakedness, relaxed and flexible from hours lounging in the sun. Slowly he rose to his knees, then to his feet. 

He stood above Lex who still sat cross legged on the ground. He blocked the sun and cast a long shadow across the grass, across Lex. Lex looked up at him, and then stood. In his fingers was a long blade of grass. He toyed with it nervously, but his gaze never left Clark's eyes. 

Clark cupped Lex's cheek in one hand. "We were young, and stupid," he said softly. 

"Speak for yourself." Lex laughed a little, and then sobered. His breath came a little shakily, a little heavier than normal. He closed his eyes and turned his face into Clark's hand. "Yes," he murmured, acquiescing. "Young and stupid." He raised a hand to Clark's bare chest, tracing the curve of Clark's muscles, caressing down to the jut of one hip where his touch lingered somewhat possessively. 

With eyes still closed, Lex parted his lips in subtle invitation. Clark issued his RSVP. 

* * *

Dust motes swirled in the beam of light arcing in through the loft window. It fell across Clark's chest like a streak of lightning, creating a new sigil instead of the more familiar "S." Two hands intertwined lay at its center. 

Clark's sanctuary was now a storeroom for some of his mother's things. The house was now rental property, currently uninhabited. Clark had suggested they take the old mattress into the house, and Lex said no. The loft belong to Clark, the house was his father's. Clark understood. He'd padded the mattress with blankets found in a trunk, and they'd lain down among them, the warmth of their bodies bringing up the scents of eucalyptus and moth balls. 

They'd kissed once before, although Clark wasn't sure Lex remembered it. It had been in the moonlight, standing upon a covered bridge leading up from the road to a small boarding stable. Lex had clung to him with desperation, begging Clark not to leave him alone and Clark, frightened and distressed, had responded by kissing him. His departure had then been delayed by a make-out session in the barn, which had stopped just short of Clark losing his virginity. He would not take advantage of his friend's addled state, nor his own duress. 

Lex was no longer addled, nor, truth be told, as close a friend as he'd once been. Clark certainly was not under duress. But they began wary and nervous, polite and rather timid, holding each other at arms length until passion overwhelmed common sense. 

The sex was rough. Lex's frustration and his old anger surpassed Clark's, which had burned away long ago. Neither one of them were innocent. Clark arced his body as Lex jerked his head back by a handful of hair and thrust into him from behind with no lubricant save a smear of saliva. Clark had taken the abuse as penance. He'd moaned and bit a come-seasoned lip bloody as he pushed back against the onslaught. Lex tore into Clark's ass as cruelly as he had Clark's mouth, pounding the sensitive place inside him until pleasure _did_ become pain and tears came to Clark's eyes. The physical pain was negligible. The emotional pain couldn't be equaled. When it was over and Clark drew his winded lover into his arms, he saw the fury replaced quickly by guilt. They needed to talk, lay everything out on the table, all the old and painful things that had destroyed them. 

Instead they curled up together on the musty old mattress and said nothing. Clark watched dust dance in the sunbeam, one hand stroking the smooth curve of Lex's skull where it rested on his shoulder, the other holding Lex's hand tightly against his chest. Everything had been laid as bare as their bodies without the complications of words whose meaning could so easily be twisted. Apologies had been made with an exchange of breath. Orgasm washed everything clean. 

Maybe it was his confidence, Superman's persona creeping into Clark's consciousness, or just the effects of time, but Lex seemed oddly subdued, more - human - than he had ever been before. Clark's earlier infatuation may have been the result of hero-worship and now that he was grown...well, Lex's status of one of the most powerful people in the world no longer intimidated him. Superman had stepped to the head of the class. No one _but_ Lex could possibly be his equal. 

Clark kissed his forehead, tickled the smooth surface with his tongue and tasted the sweat borne of Lex's sexual exertions. It thrilled him in a way unbecoming of Clark Kent, or Superman, but more suited to the arrogant creature that was his true identity. Perhaps that had been the source of the animosity - when the tables had first started to turn and hunted became hunter. 

"Mine," Kal-El thought, and his fingers tightened around Lex's hand. 

The sun energized him, made him aggressive. He closed his eyes, and found his center once more, tightening his will around the alien in him and forcing it into submission. Lex remained unaware of the small war and the importance of Clark's victory. 

"Stay," Clark murmured, his cheek pressed against the top of Lex's head. "Don't go back to Europe. You can run LexCorp from here." 

"Under Superman's watch? What happens when you have to turn a blind eye to something I do that doesn't meet with your meticulous standards of morality, Clark?" Lex propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at Clark with an expression of mild disgust. "Can you? Or will you barge into my office flinging accusations at me before hauling my ass off to prison?" 

"I...." 

Lex's expression softened. He squeezed Clark's hand. "Clark, I hated you for lying to me. How can I ask you to lie _for_ me?" Disengaging his fingers from Clark's he rolled to his feet, and moved away into the shadows slowly filling the room. Clark heard him fumbling with his belt as he slipped back into his pants. 

Clark sat up, and drew his knees up to his chest. He watched Lex cross the room to the window where the last of the sunset lingered. It bathed him in light as he stood there buttoning his shirt. It stained the white shirt and Lex's fair skin a pale, orangish hue. 

"This was a mistake," Lex flung out an arm so he could button his sleeve. 

Sighing, Clark wrapped his arms around his legs,and rested his chin upon his knees. "I guess." He smiled a little to himself. "Not so young anymore, but perhaps still pretty stupid." 

"I wanted to sleep with you from the moment I met you," Lex confessed quietly. 

Clark couldn't see him, but he heard the wistfulness in his voice, and sensed him gazing out the window into the sunset. It was the same sunset they'd watched together before. The same one Clark had watched with Lana. He'd never known where his head was back then. He'd labored under a huge mantle of denial - denial of his origins, his sexuality, his purpose in life. 

"Did you?" he murmured. 

Super hearing caught the soft sound of Lex's bare feet on the wooden floor, the tapping of his fingers upon the window sill as he stood there looking out into the fields beyond. A neighboring farmer was leasing the land, but the house and the garden were empty, barren. The farm was a ghost of what it had once been. 

"I always pictured something more romantic," Lex continued. "Not a quick fuck on a rotten mattress in a barn. At best, candlelight and music in my bed at the mansion; at worst, sneaking into your bedroom hoping your father didn't catch us." 

Clark glanced over his shoulder. "I wouldn't have done it you know, not then." 

"I know." 

"Disappointed?" 

Lex sighed deeply. Clark felt the mattress dip as Lex knelt behind him and started working at his shoulders where the tension was again starting to build. Even Lex's strong hands couldn't untie knots in muscles strong enough to bend steel, but they felt good nonetheless. Clark leaned back slightly, luxuriating in the sensation of Lex's body close to his, closing his eyes as he felt Lex's breath close to his ear. 

"When I came here I wanted to confront you, force an argument, throw your lies up into your face." Soft lips pressed against Clark's neck where it met his shoulder, then withdrew. "But when I saw you there, lying in the sun, sleeping, I remembered how much I'd loved you once." 

"Once?" 

The massage stopped. Lex withdrew his hands. "I'm not going back to Europe." 

Clark turned his head to look at him. "Yeah?" 

Standing, Lex stood within the backdrop of the fading sunset and the first stars of the evening. "I'm sorry, Clark." He shook his head. "This shouldn't have happened." 

He bent, picked up his shoes and his tie, and descended the stairs into the darkness. 

* * *

"I didn't know," Superman said. 

It was a windy day in Metropolis. Flowers and flags fluttered from atop a multitude of graves, some vases tipping over to spill their bright contents across the rain soaked ground. Superman's cape swirled out behind him as if trying to call him away from the sad place back into the skies. It tugged at his shoulders - "Come away, fly away." 

His boots remained planted firmly on the ground. Against the backdrop of dark marble headstones, freshly turned earth, and the black clad man standing next to him, Superman's garish colors were out of place, almost mocking the dead. Death was gray and black and brown, not bright baby blue and crimson. 

Lex glanced over at him. "I tried to keep her out of the limelight, she preferred it that way, unlike several other ex-Mrs. Luthors." 

"You loved her." It wasn't a question. 

There was a snort of laughter. "She never tried to kill me," Lex said, and then his voice grew soft. "She gave me a daughter." 

Clark sighed. "It wasn't me you were missing, Lex. I'm not why you came back here. Why didn't you tell me?" 

"You wouldn't have slept with me." 

"Jesus." 

Lex bent, and straightened the flowers. His shoes became muddy from the dirt mounded over the grave. It had been but two days. He cocked his head up at Clark as he rose. " _Do_ you believe in God, Clark?" 

"I suppose. The universe is a pretty intricate thing just to have had happened." 

"Some people have hailed you as the second coming, were you aware of that?" Lex dusted the mud from his hands. He paused in front of Clark, gazing into his eyes. "Perhaps your messiah complex isn't a complex." 

"I can't heal the sick, raise the dead and my water into wine vision seems to be on the fritz." Clark smiled wryly. "Lex, I have a hard time balancing my checkbook." 

"I didn't say I believed it." 

"You wouldn't." Clark whispered. "You've seen the dark side." His expression collapsed into one he'd not affected since he was young; morose, somewhat pouting. "You and I live in glass houses, Lex. Neither of us have any right to cast stones." 

Lex remained silent. They walked slowly toward the parking lot. 

"Stay with me tonight." 

"Clark...." 

"There's candlelight," Clark stopped him with a hand around his elbow, drawing Lex's gaze once more. "And music." He let out a breath, speaking in barely a whisper. "When we're together there won't be a Superman. There won't be a LexCorp. CEO. Just us, like it used to be. It wasn't a mistake, Lex. We deserve a second chance." 

The long pause had Clark's heart racing. He was seconds from turning away when Lex reached out a hand and touched his face. 

"You're beautiful. You always were. I remembered that when I saw you sleeping, lying in the sun stripped of everything you'd ever been." Lex inhaled slowly, his hand falling from Clark's face to his chest, his fingers idly tracing the glyph imprinted there. "I thought we could start over. But when we - I wanted to hurt you, Clark. I was so - angry - even after all these years." 

"I know. Lex, and I owe you an apology." Clark put his own hand upon his chest, capturing Lex's so that the other man could feel his alien strength. "But maybe now you see why I was so confused. I didn't know who to trust. Maybe I should have confided in you. I don't know." 

Lex shook his head. "No," he said bluntly. "Not me, and maybe that was for the best. I would have put a Kryptonite dagger in your heart." 

"What makes you think you didn't?" Clark whispered. 

It started to rain. Small droplets struck Clark's chest and shoulders, darkening the garish blue cloth. 

"Stay with me, Lex," he said. 

"Clark...." 

"Stay with me." 

Lex glanced over at his chauffer, then back to Clark. "All right. I'll be there at eight." He sighed, then smiled as Clark beamed at him. "You look idiotic in that outfit." 

"The Celts painted themselves blue and went naked into battle." 

"You aren't Celtic, Clark. You aren't even human." 

"A minor technicality." 

Lex laughed. 

* * *

Clark lay sprawled across his bed in a pool of sunlight streaming in from the balcony doors. They had been flung open wide, allowing in the bright morning light. He basked in it like a lion lolling upon a sunny African plain, practically purring as he soaked up the warmth. It lit up his eyes, turning them green/gilt, and picked up the faint chestnut highlights in his dark brown hair. It glistened in the small droplets of sweat still beading down the small of his back. They'd just finished having sex, one of the few exertions that _could_ make Clark break a sweat. He now lay upon his belly, sated and lazy, with his head resting on his arms, watching Lex. Lex stood naked upon the balcony with his head flung back and his arms outstretched as if embracing the sun itself. He laughed out loud, making Clark smile. 

Abruptly he turned, and came back to the bed. His face was flushed with pleasure. His skin smelled of sunshine and fresh air. Clark held him close. They lay together basking in the sunshine, legs and arms intertwined until it was hard to say where one left off and the other began. 

All was as it should be. 


End file.
